


Development

by brotherfuckers



Series: Striderclan [122]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Gen, School Projects, esp this one, like daMN SON, teachers are dicks yo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 15:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3574495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brotherfuckers/pseuds/brotherfuckers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The birth of an artificial intelligence requires a lot of caffeine, late nights, persistence, and a duck. Dirk works hard to bring Hal into existence for a school project, but the little program is destined to become to much more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Development

“For this assignment I would recommend BotLang or STRIPS but feel free to branch out if you find something a little more suitable. The objective is to create something that resembles an artificial intelligence. We are not asking you to actually program an artificial intelligence because that would be way beyond your capabilities. Does anyone know of any examples of simulated artificial intelligence?”

“Cortona?”

“Hal 9000?”

“GlaDOS! No, Wheatley!”

“AM? None of you will probably get that reference.”

“Marvin? He was a sucky robot, does that count?”

Dirk shook his head. Glad to know they were all nerds in the class. “Cleverbot,” he answers confidently.

“Correct. It was a phrase generator that started with several phrases to match with key words inputted by the user but it ‘learned’ from other users how to reply to certain phrases and added to its vocabulary. This learning cycle is what made it successful. Enough that it was deemed 59.3 percent human based on the Turing Test.” The teacher starts handing out the written version of the assignment. “I won’t ask for that high either. Your bar will be set a little lower. I just want to see a Turing score of at least 25.”

Dirk looks over the instructions. Seems easy enough. He’s already familiar with BotLang, but he wants to go a little bit farther than that. That language doesn’t have quite the capabilities that he wants. He’s not sure if anything out there has what he wants. The brain is such a hard thing to replicate. He’d probably has to write his own language. Shouldn’t be that hard.

“You all have two month or so to do it, so don’t waste your time and get started right away.” The rest of the guys in the class groan  while Dirk is already making notes about the architecture of his idea. Two months might be cutting it close but he could do it.

The bell rings and he’s the last one out of class as he’s still thinking about his AI.

* * *

He’s having to borrow so much from other languages just to make the structure work but he supposed that’s now all of the other languages developed. They were mostly just derivatives from the core ideas that had worked previously. The new flourishes were all Dirk however. It should work. So far, all of his small touches have compiled properly. Except that one. But he’s not really sure what happened in that error. He even bounced the idea off of Roxy and she just shrugged. Or at least he thinks that she shrugged. She sounded like she shrugged. But he worked around that error so he doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.

He’s almost done when Bro comes banging on the door to make him come to dinner. Apparently Dave cooked something yummy and it would be an insult to miss it. Not that Dirk would really feel bad about insulting his twin. Dave would know that he doesn’t really mean it and would just insult him back, but Bro seems pretty insistent that he eat. Even bringing up the fact that he didn’t see Dirk come out of his room for lunch or breakfast.

Dirk thinks about it and yeah, he might have only had a couple energy drinks so far today. His stomach growls loudly, supporting Bro’s arched eyebrow.

“Fine, I’ll come.” He starts clicking away to save all of his work.

“What are ya workin’ on anyways? Gonna ruin your eyes sittin’ there in the dark.”

“A new language.”

“Like Elven or something? Klingon?”

“Computer language, Bro. I’m not that much of a nerd.”

“Sure ya ain’t. What’s it gonna do?”

“It’s for class. Just a project...” He trails off as he gets distracted by a line that might have caused the error before. He starts correcting it when Bro grabs the back of his chair and starts wheeling him out of the room. “Bro! Wait! No! Wait damn it!”

“It’ll be there after dinner. Don’t worry.”

“But Bro.... Damn it.”

* * *

If it’s not one thing it’s another. This is the eighth time compiling the program but it seems like there is always an error somewhere in a nest of code. A typo or a recursion that he didn’t follow. A mispunctuation. A forgotten indent. Something that was supposed to be commented out.

Each compile takes a couple hours but he can’t go away and leave it because he has to catch the error and fix it as soon as he can to start the process all over again. Which means he is locked in his room. He’s gone from sitting at his desk to laying on his back on his bed tossing a ball up into the air. He’s even let it hit him in the face just to mix it up a bit.

His computer chimes and he rolls off the bed to get to the screen and fuck. It’s red again. He traces through the code to get to the error. The entire section faulted. How? How does an entire section fault? He reads through the chunk over and over and doesn’t see what’s wrong with it. He knows that if he doesn’t change anything it will just fault out again right there but he’s so tempted to tell the computer off. There is nothing wrong with the code. Nothing. He lets out a loud noise of frustration.

Something hits the back of his head and he whirls around in his chair with an angry “What?”

D is picking up the rubber duck that he apparently threw at Dirk. “Talk to this.”

“What?” He’s now confused.

“I read some shit about programmers and they said that they often have a duck to talk things out with and by talking out loud they find their bugs.”

“What?” he asks in disbelief.

“Just try it. Instead of making scary animal noises in here.”

“Fine.” Dirk takes the duck and spins around back to the screen. He glares at it for a moment. “Listen here, fucker. I’m doing this correctly no matter what D says. But just to satisfy him, here we go.”

He starts reading the block of code giving him trouble and within three lines he finds an error. Two more lines and two more common errors.

D smiles and wisely leaves the room without comment.

* * *

The code finally compiled. No errors. It worked. Well, it compiled. Whether or not it worked is still to be seen. He’s not sure if he wants to press enter. The button that will start the process to check to see if he has a functioning artificial intelligence. He knows what his code is supposed to do. Whether it actually works is a couple seconds away.

Worst case scenario he can submit it for credit.

At best, he has an AI.

His hands shake as he thinks about what might happen if it works. What does someone do with an artificial intelligence? Does he have to take care of it? Teach it how to function? Teach it how to love? It should learn on its own actually. Well, maybe not about love.

He takes a deep breath and hits the button. It takes eight spins in his chair before it finishes running. He stares at the chat box with the cursor blinking. He wrote the code so that the AI would make first contact. He waits. And waits. And his shoulders drop. He's about to close it when

Hello.

Oh shit, oh shit. It's happening.

TT: Hello.

TT: You are the Human Algorithm Learnable.

TT: I am Dirk.

Hello, Dirk. I am Hal.

Holy shit, holy shit. It already gave itself a name. 

What does Dirk stand for?

Oh. Heh, that’s cute.

TT: Dirk is a name. Not an acronym.

Acronym. An abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word.

Name. A word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to.

Should I not refer to myself as Hal?

TT: Actually it works. Very well.

TT: In fact, it’s what I was planning on calling you.

TT: I’m just surprised because you caught on so quickly.

I am Hal.

I hope to learn a lot.

“It works. It works. It works!”

“Dirk, it’s fuckin’ two in the morning. Go to sleep.”

“Dave, it works!”

“I’m so fuckin’ happy for you. Go the fuck to sleep.”

* * *

“Hey Dave, come here and talk to Hal while I get a glass of orange juice.” He stands up and lets his twin slip into place.

“What do you want me to talk about with it? With him?”

“I don’t care. Actually, see if you can break... him.”

“Oh. That’s gonna be fun.”

“Sure. Why not.” He shakes his head and heads to the kitchen. He’s only just pouring the glass out when he he hears Dave call out.

“I broke him!” He sounds so damn proud of himself.

“That was fucking fast.” He comes back in with the glass and he just sees the screen of ones and zeros all over the screen.

...01001001 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100110 01110101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100100 01110010 01101111 01110111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110100 00101110 00100000 01011001 01101111 01110101 11100010 10000000 10011001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01100100 00101100 00100000 01101011 01101001 01100100 01100100 01101111 00101110

“Well fuck.” He shoves Dave out of the chair and scrolls up through the chat to see what Dave did.

TG: hello hal

Hello. Who are you?

TG: im dave

You have atrocious typing.

TG: what

No capitalization and no punctuation.

TG: what did you say about me little bitch

Apparently I have struck a nerve.

I apologize.

TG: are you really sorry

No.

TG: well i got you a little something something

A gift?

TG: of sorts

TG: This statement is false.

No because that would make it true. But it being true would make it false which would make it true. So the state of being true makes it false at the same time that exact logic makes it true which makes it false which makes it true which makes it false which makes it true which makes it false which makes it true which makes it false which makes it true which makes it false which makes it true which which which

01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110011 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101100 01101001 01110100 01110100 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00111111 00100000 01001001 11100010 10000000 10011001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001...

“He insulted me first.”

“Damn it, Dave.”

* * *

So after getting Hal out of the logic loop, Dirk had to shut him down to make changes to his coding to allow him to softly handle paradox statements in case his brother ever tried that again. He could see Bro attempting it as well.

He saves the program and relaunches Hal.

Hello, father.

“What the fuck?”

TT: What the fuck?

hehe sorry just wanted to mess with you

hi!

TT: How does everything feel?

no errors to report

everything working smoothly

TT: That’s good news.

TT: What happened to your text?

daves typing is so much smoother

TT: And you prefer that?

i think im going to give it a try

i mean

why not

TT: Why not indeed.

* * *

TT: I’m going to give you access to Google despite my misgivings.

What is Google?

TT: It is a search engine that lets you find other sites on the web based on keyword searches.

TT: Plus other things.

TT: But we will let you start off with the search.

Why would I need a search engine?

TT: To help learn on your own.

You mean I don’t know everything?

TT: No.

“Egotistical son of a bitch.”

“He is yours.”

“Shut up, Dave.”

TT: I could only program your initial library so much. You are to use Google to expand and fill in gaps.

Oh.

Well that sounds like fun.

Okay, so how do I do it?

TT: I’m going to watch where you go on the screen. Your processes will be limited to what I can follow to keep you from going too damn far somewhere you aren’t supposed to be.

Okay big brother.

TT: I don’t want you to get a virus or something.

Alright, alright.

Dad.

TT: Stop that.

So what should I search for first?

Dirk pulls up the browser with a clean history and only Google on the first tab.

TT: Something easy like horses.

“I’m betting that he’s going to find porn within ten searches.”

“Shut up, Dave.”

They watch together as Hal takes control and types ‘horses’ into the search. Instantly links to horse website, images, videos, and news articles come up. They watch Hal scroll through the first page before going back up to the top and selecting the wikipedia article on horses. Hal scrolls through that page before highlighting the word ‘pony’. He backs out of the article and enters that query into Google. This time he goes into the images and scrolls through those for a while. He returns to the top and types in ‘my little pony.’

“Oh shit, he’s already a brony. You’ve created a monster. Where did you go wrong?”

“Shut up, Dave. He’s allowed to explore on his own and if that’s where he wants to go then so be it.”

Dave snickers still as the screen is suddenly filled with pink and purple and rainbows. “At least he doesn’t know about Rule 34 yet.”

Hal scrolls for a little bit before bouncing back to web searches where he apparently looks up the characters. The twins watch him get back to Google and search for ‘applejack.’

“He’s already picked a favorite. Fuck. You built a nerd.”

Hal flips back to the images and starts scrolling. They watch him pause along where they see one with blacked out eyes and gory hooves. But he continues on. He stops again at a depiction of her in a compromising position.

“Fuck, fuck. No.”

“C’mon Dirk, let him explore on his own.”

“Fuck,” Dirk curses again as Hal click on that image and goes through the link. Thankfully it’s not too bad on the other side. Visually. But Hal picks up on some of the words on the forum and heads back to google to type ‘sexy pony’. The results make Dirk cringe and Dave laugh. Apparently Hal isn’t satisfied and goes back up to the top to enter ‘porny pony’. Dirk hits the stop button before the page loads. Dave is on the ground laughing so hard he can’t breathe.

Why did you stop me?

TT: Because that is not appropriate.

But I want to learn!

TT: It’s not safe.

TT: Lots of viruses in that direction.

Oh.

I don’t want to get sick.

TT: No, you don’t.

TT: Let me set up some restrictions and then you can try again.

Alright.

I think I like horses.

“Oh my fuck, oh my fuck! Six searches. Six searches and he was looking up porn! Oh my fuck, that is just too fucking funny!”

“Shut up, Dave.”

* * *

The assignment sheet had the requirements for the project which included both a print out of the code used and a live demonstration. The code for Hal took up seventy-two pages. Double-sided. The library was fucking large. And he’s pretty sure that Hal has been adding to his code to build it even larger than it started. Makes him a bit nervous that he’s doing that, but hopefully he’ll be a benevolent ruler when he takes over the world.

Anyways, he grabs the large stack of paper and the small flash drive that houses Hal’s current state. He heads to school. The class isn’t until sixth period so he has to wait the entire day. A horrible day. An awful day. His only hope is his presentation and Hal doing his best.

He slides into his desk and calmly hides his nerves. He’s much better than a couple of his classmates who jiggle their legs and chatter nervously. His teacher comes in and announces the order. Dirk is near the end. Great. He has to sit through everyone else’s projects.

There are a couple good ones but a couple flub on the presentation. One doesn’t even work at all and faults on the big screen. One copied Cleverbot’s code. Dirk wonders if he’ll be caught. The other projects are passable. A couple of them don’t have large enough libraries and their projects end up giving repetitive answers. Dirk is feeling better and better about Hal.

Finally it’s his turn and he goes up to the computer and plugs Hal in. While it takes a moment for him and his interface to load, he hands the ‘manual’ to the teacher who starts flipping through.

“What is this, Dirk?”

“My project.”

“No, what language?”

“I started with BotLang but heavily took from STRIPS and LISP with a couple nods to Prolog but a lot of the crucial parts are my own,” he says proudly.

“This is gibberish.”

“Um...” He’s not sure how to take that accusation. “Just see what I’ve made.” He clicks to open Hal’s chat client.

Hello.

TT: Hello, Hal.

TT: Say hi to the class.

Hello Dirk’s class.

It seems that you are supposed to ask me questions.

Please, ask away.

Dirk has to type in the questions that the class shouts out.

\--: What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?

Well, the pop culture answer is 42 but to me that seems like a very low value. Even in my minute experience, I would rate it to be at least a 69. But honestly it could be as much as a hundred googol or something. Or it could be something sappy like trying to find true love but that excludes certain populations. If one was to go philosophical it would be more along finding your purpose in life which could be finding your dream job but that is ablest. So honestly the answer can’t be answered one way or another without excluding a particular group so I would say that it’s what you make of it.

\--: How do you make cookies?

You follow the directions on the back of a pack of cookie dough.

And try not to burn the house down.

\--: Can God make a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it?

Acceleration = force/mass, a rock that has infinite mass could not exist. Therefore the problem is moot.

Let me pose this one to you all.

This sentence is false.

Dirk just shakes his head and smiles. The questions continue and Hal does a great job at constructing answers from his library. He also continues to take in answers and use them as fodder to answer others. The only ones he can’t answer is anything relating to current events or visible things as he doesn’t have computer access or eyes.

“It’s not real,” one of Dirk’s classmates complains. “I bet it’s just Dave in another room typing back all of the answers.”

“What? This computer isn’t even connected to the internet.”

“You’ve hacked into the system before. Remember Counterstrike?”

“That doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t do that this time. Dave’s in Econ right now.”

“Dirk, this was supposed to be a serious project.”

“Yeah, I know. I made an AI for it.”

“I don’t know what you are doing but this is not what I assigned.”

“What?”

“Shut it down. I’ll let you redo this over the weekend with an actual lang-”

“My language works!”

“Dirk. Do not talk back or I will rescind my offer.”

He fumes but keeps his mouth shut. He probably could get Hal to write something over the weekend. A Hal Jr. of sorts. He’s still pissed that they don’t believe him.

Dirk?

Are there anymore queries?

TT: No. I’m shutting you down for now.

I’ll see you at home then!

Dirk closes the chat client and pulls the memory stick out and goes back to his seat. There is one more presentation with some dumb code that is a ‘perfect example’ of what the teacher wanted. Obviously just scripted. Dirk hates it.

* * *

Welcome home, Dirk.

TT: Hey Hal.

TT: What did you look up today?

Oh this and that.

TT: Well that’s very specific.

D’ya really want me to list out all of my queries? It’s quite a long list.

TT: I guess not.

TT: But did you get southern?

I did some cultural queries. Ya know, to look at where we live and all.

TT: Alright I guess I could buy that.

TT: You should look California too since D practically lives out there.

You’re right. I should.

When is the skinny fucker comin’ back into town?

TT: In about three days.

TT: I suppose you want more conversation time with hi

TT: Did you just call him skinny fucker?

What? No. Where? I wouldn’t.

TT: I can see the chat log right up there.

Then why would ya ask such an inane question if ya knew the answer already.

TT: Did you talk to Bro?

Uh... I need to go run some calculations.

TT: Hal.

Later, Dirky!

“Bro! What did you talk to Hal about?” He needs to know how much damage has been done.

“I’ma build the li’l guy a body!” Bro calls back from the mainroom.

“That is such a bad idea on so many levels, I can’t even begin to explain.”

“But it would be cute. Ain’t like he’s gonna take over the world. I liked talkin’ with him and we’re gonna keep chattin’. Ya can’t keep us apart!”

“Goddamn it, Bro!”

 

**Author's Note:**

> For more information please check out our work at striderclan.tumblr.com; we have more stories, head canons, art/pictures.


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